Athlete Biological Passport

The NFL suspends its players without pay for any use of illegal substances based on the number of offenses and the suspensions are four games, eight games, and one full season suspension (Dolich, 2013). Each league has improved its policies in recent years, but the support for increased and better testing continues to grow. The MLB can require players to provide blood samples and the NFL had talks of taking blood samples during training camp in order to test for Human Growth Hormone (HGH), but the NBA and NHL have not applied these procedures in their programs (Calcaterra, 2013).

Performance-enhancing drugs (PED 's) have been an issue for many decades now for the medical and sports field. Olympic and professional athletes have been using them to gain an upper hand on the competition, but some may ask if it 's really worth it? Studies show that performance-enhancing drugs have been proven to negatively affect the health of athletes who take them. Simply put, performance-enhancing drugs could either improve athletic performance or can be extremely dangerous, in certain situations, deadly. There have been strict rules and drug testing in the professional sporting organizations, as well as in world competitions. For example, in the summer of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, in two of the

Blood doping creates unneeded risk and endangers an athlete’s life for a slightly increased chance of winning a competition. This practice should remain banned and athletes should seek alternative practices that do not come with unusual added health risks. Though there are logical arguments for each side, there is more evidence to support the argument that blood doping should not be legal in athletic competitions. There is too much risk involved for the reward to be so miniscule.

The use of illegal substances is rapidly increasing in the college sports due to the expansion of supplements used by athletes that are being banned. In a study done, athletes were asked if illicit drugs would negatively impact their performance. Majority of them responded “yes”, their main reasoning being; the effects of illicit drugs were both mental and physically damaging. Illicit drugs come in many forms, but the testing procedures are all the same for any substance. There is almost always a consequence with the use of prohibited substances. Drug testing is appropriate to help ensure the safety of student athletes while they participate in intercollegiate contests. (Krotee, M 555).

Rains, B. (2009). Testing Student Athletes for Drugs is Appropriate. In C. Watkins, Sports and Athletes (pp. 192-196). Detroit: Greenhaven Press.

Each Player shall be tested upon reporting to spring training. All Players will be selected for an additional unannounced urine specimen collection on a randomly selected date. Testing for drugs of abuse is not administered randomly, but on a basis of reasonable cause. If one of the Health Profession Advising Centers (HPAC) panel members has evidence that a player has used, possessed, or sold banned substances in the last 12 months, they call a conference and discuss the evidence with the other members. If a majority vote to test the suspected player is reached then testing will take place no more than 48 hours later. A test is deemed positive if: 1) A Player refuses or, without good cause, fails to take a test or refuses to cooperate with the testing process. 2) A Player attempts to substitute, dilute, mask or adulterate a specimen sample or in any other manner alter a test. 3) If the substance identified in the test results meets the levels in which the MLB has decided are too high. On January 10, 2013, MLB and the players union reached an agreement to add random, in-season human growth hormone and to a new test to reveal the use of

The use of drugs date back to the ancient Olympic games. This is where the word doping originated from which was the Greek word “doop” (CITE). Performance enhancing substances also known as steroids are used for the improvement of human activity. Because drug use is also a huge thing outside the United States the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) was created as the first international governing body to prohibit doping. However, at the 1960’s Olympic the first athlete to die of doping was of the name Knut Jensen. He was a Danish cyclist who was found with narcotics in his system which resulted to his death. In result, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established to fight doping. The United States created their own anti-doping agency called United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Therefore, drug testing is an important factor in professional sports world-wide.

The Olympics now have various organizations and committees delegated to testing for and eliminating the use of performance enhancing drugs. The most recent Olympic committee for the Games in Vancouver was partnered with the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, L’Institut national de la recherche scientifique — Institut Armand-Frappier, the United States Anti-Doping Agency, and LifeLabs to collect and test approximately 2450 blood and urine samples (“Anti-Doping Initiatives”). Their meticulousness and commitment was most definitely justified. Olympic athletes implicitly agree to a social contract of fair competition. Those athletes who take steroids have an unfair advantage over those who do not, and therefore these athletes are breaking this social contract.

Doping in sports has caused a lot of controversy throughout the years in the sports world from youth sports to the professionals. The World Anti-Doping Agency does their best to catch all the drug users but falls short with some people. This causes for an “unfair” advantage and goes against the true value of sport. It can make these players stronger and more athletic which causes more excitement for the fans to watch, more revenue for teams, and growing popularity. Using performance-enhancing drugs is banned in almost every sport, but with the allowed use of them could bring to the players and the sports teams themselves, could outweigh the negative effects of them being used in sports.

In recent years the number of athletes caught using drugs has increased dramatically. The use of a illegal or unprescribed drugs can cause serious problems and unfairness in many ways. Certain drugs can cause harm to the user and the people around the user, most student athletes do not even know what they are putting into their bodies. With all the risks many persons propose student athletes to be drug tested at random.

Do you want to want to become the peak athlete that you know your body is capable of? Well, this paper will not do that for you, but it will tell you how, and it will tell you why it should be legal to do so. Doping in sports is one of the most extensive debates within the realm of athletics. Whether it be injecting anabolic steroids, consuming them, or blood doping, athletes will do drugs. Doping has no effect on the viewership of the sport. Athletes can always find ways to cheat the system, and trying to prevent the use seems impossible. The use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) should be legalized, as long as it is allowed under medical supervision.

Doping has widely become known as the use of banned substances and practices by sports personnel particularly athletes in an attempt to improve sporting performances. No sensible fan of sport today denies the prevalence of drugs in virtually every major sport, yet none would argue they can ever be eliminated completely. Money alone would seem to guarantee that much. High profile athletes today are competing for high stakes, not just millions, but dozens of millions. The fear of losing everything career, opportunity, contracts, name, fame, and money is pushing more sportsmen all over the world to use performance enhancing drugs, mainly

Genius as it was, the system soon caught up and cheating the test became harder (Hopkins, 2000). In the 2004 Olympic games they solely used urine samples to test for synthetic EPO (or rhEPO) in the system, which proved to be a much more accurate way to get results (“EPO detection”, 2015).

“An athlete biological passport (ABP) is an individual electronic document that represents a collation of all data regarding a specific athlete that is useful in establishing whether that individual has doped.” [1] In essence, the ABP is the record of biological tracing throughout an athlete’s career.

Random testing could also raise the point that it causes interference with one’s own privacy; yet it was a choice they had to make before choosing to play for their team. The best solution to this situation is to rather avoid using every drug, unless they are described on the allowed substances list.